Let's Shake Things Up A Bit!

Unfortunate songs?!

Tonight is one of my favorite kitsch classics – The Eurovision Song Contest – which puts me in mind of an error I made a few months ago when talking about this event. Instead of saying “songs” – die Lieder – I said *die Leider which, if it were a noun, would perhaps mean something like “the unfortunates” as the most common meaning of leider is “unfortunately.” Now this is an error that should only be common among people whose native tongue includes both “ei” and “ie” as vowel combinations and who have some idea of how the word “song” is spelled in German. In other words, I made this error as a result of mis-recalling how the word das Lied – “song” – is spelt, rather than mis-recalling how it sounds.

It is also possible that pushing me away from the correct spelling, and thus the correct pronunciation, is the English false friend “lied” which shares the spelling but neither the meaning nor the sound of das Lied. Or perhaps some interference was caused by the fact that we use “lied” in English to talk about a type of music, but keep the English pronunciation so that it matches the past tense for “to lie” (lügen – past participle gelogen)?! (You may know the “lied” as the “art song” – it is usually a poem on a romantic or pastoral theme that has been set to music: http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/.)

Not to be too critical of the Eurovision, as it is certainly a cultural phenomenon worth understanding – Abba got their start this way and Bonnie Tyler is performing this year’s British entry – if for no other reason than then one can say nil point with authority, but I have to think that there might be more value in watching a couple hours of Rechtschreib TV!